After months of deliberation, the Sixers finally introduced new coach Brett Brown on Wednesday in Philadelphia. And if you were looking for your typical rah-rah session, you were not going to find it up on the podium where Brown was seated with new general manager Sam Hinkie.

“We all know the pain of rebuilding is real,” Brown said in a press conference. “We all will experience it. It isn’t something that happens quickly. As logical as it is to say that, it is a fact, that is the truth. There needs to be a tolerance, there needs to be a patience.”

After hiring Hinkie this spring, the team made the bold decision to commit to an extended rebuilding situation by jettisoning All-Star point guard Jrue Holiday, sending him to New Orleans for the draft rights to Nerlens Noel and following that up by drafting Michael Carter-Williams with the No. 11 pick. That set the Sixers, in the short term, on a collision course with the Eastern Conference’s basement, eyes fixed on the many prized prospects expected in 2014’s draft.

That doesn’t mean it is quite as simple as kicking back, letting the losses pile up and waiting for the draft lottery results to come up. In taking the Sixers job—one he was admittedly reluctant to go for after having spent the past 12 years winning championships in San Antonio—Brown now joins Hinkie in walking a tightrope for this season. On one hand, it would be helpful if they were epically bad for the next eight months. On the other hand, they’ve got to begin instituting a winning culture amid long swaths of losing.

That was part of what attracted Hinkie to Brown, whose reputation for player development is sterling around the league. Hinkie is known for his embrace of advanced statistical analysis, and the feeling is that not only can the Sixers be in line for Andrew Wiggins or another incoming star next June, but they could unearth some gem players that others overlook, the way the Spurs and Thunder (whose general manager, Sam Presti, came from San Antonio) have done consistently.

“I didn’t want to mark time while we waited for some future to get here,” Hinkie said. “There’s so much to be done, to be the kind of organization that I hope to, that I look up to, like San Antonio, like Oklahoma City, like Utah for many, many years, the way we view an organization that does things in a way that consistently puts themselves in a position to be successful. I think we’ve got a long way to go. But I think we can make a lot of progress on that.”

Brown admitted that, coaching in San Antonio, he didn’t have much experience with losing consistently on the NBA level, a sure offshoot of any rebuilding project. He did, though, say he dealt with that while coaching in Australia’s pro league, and that the same principles from those situations will apply next year in Philadelphia.

“The rebuild part of that has to be keeping the locker room together and keeping our eye on the prize and making sure the young guys get it and Thaddeus (Young) gets it that it is going to be, at times, painful,” Brown said. “I feel like the group that we ultimately will inch along with … is the prize at the end of the tunnel. I am not saying it is going to be fine. It’s real. It’s hard sitting there going through a normal rebuild process. But I think that you just have to stay focused on what you’re there for.”

Brown did reveal some style points he hopes to bring to his team. While he comes in with a reputation for defense, he did run a sophisticated motion offense when coaching the Australian national team last year, and he said that, ultimately, his goal will be to get his players in peak physical condition so that they’ll be prepared to play up-tempo.

He will use this first year to begin to implement his systems, he said, both offensive and defensive. That will not produce wins, not immediately. They may, even, be accused of tanking this season. But Brown and Hinkie are braced for that notion.

“We aren’t going to skip steps,” Brown said. “The simplest thing I can say to answer that is I am going to do my job and we’re going to put in those pieces and the results will end up the results. That’s all I know how to do, and that’s all the players will know how to do.”